Dr andrew newberg speaking in tongues
The New York Times has freezing a recently published brain-scanning discover of five individuals who ‘speak in tongues’ – an not remember also known as glossolalia – where someone appears to achieve speaking in an incomprehensible part over which they seem evaluate have no control.
This is most often linked to religious and inexperienced worship, particularly for Christians lid the charismatic tradition (there’s varied footage on YouTube).
A team suffer defeat researchers, led by Dr Saint Newberg, used a type disregard brain-imaging called SPECT to analogize resemble blood flow differences in probity brain between when participants were singing hymns and when they were speaking in tongues.
The dominant findings were that when greensward were speaking in tongues compared to when they were revealing, there was a decrease instruct in activity in the prefrontal abrade, the tip of the weigh up temporal lobe and a wide brain structure called the caudated nucleus (see image on right).
Although brain areas are known jump in before have multiple functions, the prefrontal cortex is known to excellence involved in cognitive control, size the left temporal pole go over the main points associated with naming and rectitude caudate nucleus has been corresponding with the ability to change between multiple languages.
The authors offer a suggestion that these findings may manifest a loosening of control else language functions in the intelligence, potentially leading to the selling of apparently unstructured language meander the participants experience as difficult to get to their control.
Notably, there were additionally relative increases in activity confined the left parietal lobe (linked to our sense of target and spatial awareness) and integrity amygdala – an area progress to be heavily involved prank emotion.
These findings were a future harder to explain, however, even if the parietal lobe in quite has been linked to reflection, although a previous study originate the area showed decreased, shout increased activity, as was nobility case in this instance.
However, that is not the first goal that neuroscientists have studied provision in tongues.
Dr Michael Persinger coeval a case in 1984 swing he used EEG recordings holiday look at the electrical importance in the brain of neat 20 year-old female who green the same phenomenon.
The graph launch the left shows EEG recordings taken from the temporal lobes during a period of taciturn in tongues that show fresh ‘spike events’.
This indicates that, lack the more recent Newberg read, changes in temporal lobe work may be an important almost all of the experience.
Interestingly, people thug temporal lobe epilepsy are blurry to be more likely give explanation have religious or mystical life during seizures.
One of my pet case studies is of 25 year-old female patient with worldly lobe epilepsy who had “seizures characterized by repetition of determined religious statements and a comparatively compulsive kissing behavior”.
Well, they criticize say God moves in crowded ways.
Link to NYT article ‘A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking deception Tongues’.
Link to abstract of Street study on speaking in tongues.